Fellows Blog: Day 38

If our 5:45 wake-up time wasn’t bad enough, this morning Haleigh and Amber killed five mosquitos within 7 minutes, found a gecko (which made us question how many mosquitos could get in if I gecko could) and freaked out when we saw there was a bat circling the room (which made us question how many geckos could get in if a bat could). The bat disappeared after a minute or two, we don’t know where it went, it’s probably living in the pipes… In addition, Kyrillos had an awful night, waking up every 10-15 minutes because it’s like 90 degrees in our rooms.

Anyways, we drove around all morning on our game tour, seeing a bunch of different animals. See the pictures below for all the fun facts we learned! And see here for a video of warthogs, one of which charged at Kyrillos when he got too close to it!

We had a breakfast of omelets, toast, pineapple and African tea while looking out at Lake Albert. At 621 meters above sea level, this is the lowest point in Uganda. We also formally met a nice couple we’ve seen many times; they seem to keep following us and they were even at lunch at the same time as us yesterday at the rhino sanctuary! They’re from Italy and on their honeymoon, and they were also on our boat tour this afternoon. We’ve noticed there’s a lot of European honeymooners here as well.

For lunch, we went to a restaurant near the river that was also a campsite, and enjoyed sandwiches and more pineapple. We then went on a boat trip of the Nile to the waterfall we went to yesterday. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get as close as we wanted, but we did learn that 10594 cubic feet of water goes over the waterfall per second! See the videos here, here and here of the falls (we used the wifi of the place we’re staying to upload).

Also on the boat tour, we met this dad and daughter from San Francisco that are in Uganda for a wedding. The dad was in the peace corps and fifty years ago he taught at a high school in Uganda for two years, and this is the first time he’s been back! We explained our project with LFR to them and the daughter knew about WashU and had heard of the model of using motorcycle taxi drivers as prehospital care during a class at her college which was very exciting!

Game drives and the boat cruise pretty much consisted the majority of our day today. Here’s a video of the drive. Kyrillos said, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so we hope you enjoy today’s photo essay blog post :)

This elephant, the African Savannah Elephant, is the largest type of elephant at 6000 kg, and very respectful animals. The herds are led by adult females and elephants stay with their family until they’re at least teenagers. We also saw a classic symbiotic relationship with birds eating ticks off the elephant. Here’s a video of the elephants!

We didn’t want to go anywhere near the hyenas after we learned they can start eating animals while their prey is still alive. In return, nothing eats a hyena because once it dies it’s poisonous

This type of giraffe is nicknamed the “socks giraffe” because they don’t have spots on the bottom half of their legs, like they’re wearing socks. We could tell this was a male giraffe because it has darker spots and also learned they have white patches without fur due to bruises from play, not from attacking. Two videos of giraffes: here and here

If you zoom into the middle of the tree, this leopard was relaxing after killing an antelope and dragging it up the tree. We got binoculars to see this closer, and the leopard is actually really pretty. Amber now wants a pet leopard and also a warthog, to which our guide responded “you can have one but you’re going to be arrested.” Amber thought it was worth it.

We were surprised to learn that hippos and elephants can swim very well across water, across the whole Nile in fact! Hippos are also the third largest animal after elephants and rhinos. Hippos mate and give birth in water, with a gestation period close to humans of 7-8 months. In the wild their lifespan is around 40 years, but in captivity it can reach up to 50. They can swim at 28 mph and hold their breath for 5-6 minutes. The part of the Nile in Uganda has over 1,000 hippos in it!

The Ugandan crocodile is the second largest in the world, after Australian, and has a lifespan of 100 years. They weigh 2200 lbs and are almost 20 feet long. Not something we want to come face to face with! Especially after we saw one crocodile with its fresh prey, waiting for its skin to decompose so it could eat the animal, and another with its mou

The Ugandan kob, which we saw everywhere, this was taken in a large field with at least 200 of them around! Kobs have really bad memories so they run away from their predator for like 30 seconds, but then forget they’re being chased and stop to graze or relax, only to be eaten by predators.

Not seen in this picture: the amount of times Kyrillos complained about not having his go pro or camera

Kyrillos and Devir mid chewing breakfast

How many WashU students does it take to take a picture through binoculars?

Two and an alumna, apparently.

Cute boat selfie :)

This was the closest we could get to the waterfall without our boat possibly tipping over

The holes in this wall are actually small bird nests!

Kyrillos spent two hours making a time lapse of our trip today, which resulted in numbness in his hands and “pain I’ve never felt before”. Don’t worry he’s ok now, and we have a cool time lapse, although Amber and Haleigh were very worried he was going to fall out of the van the whole time